Interesting how this book applies principles of business and management to personal life, like marriage. Not a bad read, although I am skeptical of the results.

“Treat Me Like a Customer” is another in a long line of books bent on helping the emotionally lost navigate their personal lives. It strikes itself apart from other books by appealing to narrow audience: the married, christian, workaholic businessman. Since, I’m not a christian workaholic businessman, I felt out of place reading this book at times. A lot of the advice will seem obvious to the average person, but, tragic as it may be, not so obvious to the target audience. While I feel that the target audience could have been broadened substantially, christian workaholic businessman are notorious for needing to be slammed over the head with a foreign point of view before it sinks in. If you fit the target audience, you should pick up this book for the sake of your family and loved ones, if not for yourself. Others may wish to steer clear due to the relatively little humor or entertainment value and redundant messages.

Overall this is a solid book with solid advice. There is nothing new here – a basic return to basic values. The author reminds us that we very easily get too caught up in our careers and treat our clients, coworkers, vendors and everyone else WAY better than we treat our families. The author discusses how the more money we make, almost inversely affects our family life/marriage. There probably is something to this – and someday I will have to figure out how to make enough money to test it! LOL

The premise of the book is solid, but I don’t think you need to buy it. Essentially the book recommends keeping stronger boundaries – do not let work come first all the time. Make sure you get to your kid’s little league games, plays and other events. Make time for your spouse. Make time for your faith. Although the book is written from a male POV, the reverse is very true in this day and age. And the author does go out of the way to say that.

If your family life is a trainwreck because you work too much, than definitely purchase this book. If not, you can rent it from the library.

Louis Upton’s book, Treat Me Like a Customer, is not your usual relationship book. It is a practical, pragmatic, and action-oriented guide to help you rehabilitate your relationship with your family by (as the subtitle states) applying the same methods at home that you quite naturally utilize in the workplace. The premise of the book is simple and some may well dismiss this book as overly simplistic. However, the book is similar in this way many books directed at improving management in the business world: on the surface, the advice may appear simple and the solutions may seem axiomatic; but when it comes down to it you would never have thought to try these methods or have concocted a strategy as to how to make these methods work at home without Upton’s advice. So even though the book may seem straight forward, Upton presents a novel way to effectively apply your existing skill set to make your relationships at home really work.

I would have thought that all this family and relationship TQI would simply be too awkward to apply in ‘real life.’ But the fact is by changing the way you look at your wife and family, Upton has come up with practical solutions that can really work. Don’t worry. You won’t be slavishly 6 Sigma-ing your family with outputted spreadsheets and plots of widgets on normal curves. And you don’t need a powerful statistics software package to work you through the book.

Upton starts out by encouraging his readers to assess their situation and reaquaint themselves with their families. After years of marriage or a relationship, it makes sense to reassess the situation, just as you continually monitor your relationships with clients in businesses. He moves on to improving communications, suggesting regular meetings and synchronization of schedules. He stresses the importance of not just witnessing successes, but planning for successes with your wife and moves on to give strategies on using your customer service skills to keep your family happy. By the end of the book, Upton suggest ways of applying risk strategies to boost success at home, ways to improve relationship ‘quality control,’ and, finally, how to deliver a ‘great product.’ Along the way, Upton gives clear examples of how to apply strategies, work-book type exercises to make sure you assess the situation correctly, and gives simple directions to make sure that you stay on track.

What is missing here is a sort of men are from Mars/women are from Venus perspective. Upton admits to writing this book with mostly men in mind. Although most of the advice in the book could apply as much to a working woman as it could for a man, the straight forward, pragmatic, A-therefore-B approach will likely appeal to men more than woman. There is little left for your intuition here. This is mostly about applying rules and that’s what we guys like to do. It gives us lists of things to do and a method to solve the problems. Women often think quite differently about relationships, and some communication problems that Upton speaks about may have less to do with the ability to communicate and more due to differences in the way men and women communicate. These more sociological differences are better described in books like Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. (Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: The Classic Guide to Understanding the Opposite Sex)

One thing that Upton neglects to mention, is that when a business hits hard times and just can’t see its way out of a hole, they may need to hire an outside consultant.That being said, if there are serious problems with a relationship or you really just can’t communicate with your spouse on any level, this book isn’t going to work. You may need a marriage counselor.

Finally, please note that the book is published by Zondervan press, an evangelical, Christian press with a mission, “to be the leader in Christian communications meeting the needs of people with resources that glorify Jesus Christ and promote biblical principles.” There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, so long as a reader or buyer is aware of this fact prior to purchasing. When I selected the book from the Vine list, it was placed under the category of, “advice on careers & achieving success” and I was unaware that it was published by a Christian publisher.

Upkins is clearly a religious man and this shoots through in the examples that he posits throughout the book. His principles can certainly appeal to a broader audience, but the book is rife with references to God, Church, and prayer. These are mostly examples from his own life or occur when Upkins’ suggestions as to how to improve spirituality in your home. I did not find these references to be overly invasive and they certainly did not diminish the value of the book. I merely state this from the beginning, so that a perspective buyer is aware. In the same vein, this book addresses issues for men married to women and does not address other kinds of relationships.

The reality of a successful career is often a failed family/personal life. The author, Louis Upkins, attempts to analogize workplace strategies and methods to lead a fullfilling/rewarding family/personal life. Upkins does make the important disclaimer of NOT actually treating family like customers but instead using the business terminologies as ANALOGIES to effectively take care of what’s most important: our family/loved ones. It’s about taking methodical, step by step, open communications approach to family life; with emphasis on marriage. The book also provides clear examples of successful executives and the problems they face at home. Nevertheless, the book doesn’t just apply to top execs and business people only, everyday people can find some useful advice to improve their family/personal lives. Certainly worth reading.